


More Like A Warning

by voleuse



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-01
Updated: 2005-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>There's nothing left to tell, nothing to tell</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Like A Warning

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through S1, specifically for the season finale. Title and summary taken from Cate Marvin's _Dear Petrach_.

Jones doesn't have an official title, not really.

New biological samples to tag and process? She can do it.

A bank of the computers froze up? She can fix it.

Someone was tagged by enemy fire? She can patch them up.

Along with a handful of others, she's a jack-of-all-trades, with no particular specialty.

Kang names them the ghostbusters. Martinez classifies them as IT. Robson says "everyhand" is a better descriptor.

Jones rolls her eyes and calls them all idiots, because they don't need an official title.

They get things done. That's all that matters.

*

 

Off the record and off the clock, however, Jones likes to consider herself the unofficial historian of the mission.

Everything's being documented, of course, recorded and analyzed and correlated. No matter what happens, there won't be any question of what happened on Atlantis.

But there isn't any _story_ in that, she thinks. It's a collection of transcripts and statistics, nothing else.

So between the minor emergencies that make up her day-to-day existence, Jones slips out a notebook and writes.

She has a couple dozen of them, sturdy and wirebound, the kind of thing she used to take notes in high school. Every night, she sketches out the events of the day, what she saw and what she heard.

The vague pronouncements Dr. Weir makes to the city at large, the latest gossip about what McKay did to give Pearson another nervous breakdown. New foods the Athosians have introduced, new words filtering into everyday speech.

Jones carries a notebook in her pack, too, along with the regular miscellany she needs throughout the day.

And as the Wraith draw closer, she finds herself compelled to write. She jots down notes every chance she can get, tries to make sure to mention everyone by name. She records the jokes, the discoveries, the shared memories of their families back on Earth.

She commits it all to paper, everything she can, for hours each night.

She doesn't let herself think about _why_.

Not until the hive ships approach.

*

 

Even as Weir announces the evacuation, Jones slips her filled notebooks into her backpack, a half-dozen of them, and then rushes out into the corridor.

The rest of her team is already there, walking to the center of the city, to the gate.

"Where are we going to go?" she shouts over the alarm.

There's silence, then Kang replies, "I'm sure they know."

"Lots of planets in the system," Robson adds.

"Right," she says. "Okay."

And then another alarm blares, and Martinez, listening on a comm link, gasps.

"It's Earth."

*

 

Her team is, of course, called to coordinate the ingress.

The uniforms are a little startling to her eyes, starched and formal. She'd gotten used to the haphazard dress of the scientists, and the oft-rumpled uniforms of the Atlantis teams.

Jones shakes her head, directs the newcomers to appropriate storage areas. They move briskly, but stop often, as commanding officers march in, inspect the goods, and sweep out.

Once, she gets stuck next to a crate of grenades, carried by a couple of kids fresh out of grad school.

"Any chocolate in there?" she asks.

One of them raises his eyebrow. The other laughs.

She smiles at the second guy. "Can I ask you something?"

He schools his expression back to stern. "Depends on the question."

"Do you know who won the NBA playoffs this year?"

*

 

When the plan doesn't work, the evacuations begin again.

Most of her team is sent off, but Jones isn't. She has advanced training in first aid, and she's had field experience.

She gives her notebooks to Robson, makes him swear to keep them safe.

She has copies herself, transcribed and saved to disk, just in case.

In case he doesn't make it, either.

Then someone hands her a gun and sends her to sickbay.

There's nothing to do but wait.

*

 

She hates this part, right as the battle begins.

The artillery rattles, the bombs begin to fall, and everyone in sickbay stares at the floor, trying not to twitch.

She almost wishes someone would come in, just so she'd have something to do.

One hour passes. Two soldiers come in, tagged by shrapnel.

Another hour, another couple of soldiers.

There aren't nearly enough people in sickbay, she thinks. Not nearly enough.

Another hour, and another, but no one comes in.

The battle's still going.

Jones resists the urge to take out the notepad in her pocket, because she already knows what she'd scribble down.

_Drums. Drums in the deep._

It's not going to end that way, she tells herself. It can't.

The building shakes, again, a concussive shudder.

And she hears a scream.

Then another, closer.

She takes out her notebook.


End file.
